A minor housekeeping item before we begin - no post tomorrow, folks...
I wasn't kidding about those off days.
Thanks for reading (if I ever do post again),
Tim
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The basic technologies behind the smart phone were all developed with significant government support.
Since basic research does not officially lead to a specific product or output, its funding is an easy target for governments during times of austerity. It is the basic unstructured nature of the task, however, that leads to new inventions.In his section about the smart phone, Harford lists the eleven key components that came together to form the final product. He traces the history of each component back to a government project of some kind to make a point about government’s often-unseen role in innovation. Though it rarely creates in the manner of a famed inventor, governments participate in the process of innovation through a mixture of funding and policy.
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Goods with positive externalities tend to come around slower than society at large would prefer.The comment about positive externalities is one of the most important things I learned studying economics. A positive externality is when a third party benefits from an economic transaction. An employee who passes a CPR course for a job and then applies this knowledge to save someone's life while outside of work is a good example.
The obvious problem in a market-driven capitalist system is the lack of incentive for anyone to produce a positive externality. This is why many economists were dismayed to see the USA pull out of the Paris Agreement. It’s not like individuals don’t care about pollution or the environment or clean energy or whatever; it’s that individuals will drive their SUVs to a global warming rally to express these views.
To put it more reasonably, the best most individuals can do regarding a positive externality is to simply reduce their output of the opposite. But doing less of the negative isn’t always equivalent to doing more of the positive. A society interested in accelerating the influence of a positive externality will lean heavily on its government to do so because, in most cases, this is the best way to do it.
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Insurance is a vital part of a healthy economy if it encourages workers to take sensible risks. Private insurers rarely profit from such coverage, however, and prefer to sell rich consumers policies for overblown risks.What was that line I took from Pachinko? Insurance is a way to prey on the weak, vulnerable, or fearful? I suppose this thought is the long-awaited counter-argument, then. It’s a valuable insight, at least, because it establishes a simple definition for public insurance. Using this as a rule of thumb would help governments determine where their presence in the insurance market was merited and where it should be left to private sector interests.
I’m tempted to write more about health insurance here – you know, reader, all the stuff I go into about how health insurance is about paying for rather than providing healthcare – but at this point even I’m sick of my own voice on this matter.
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Poor economies often choose pollution as the price to pay for progress.
Credible estimates suggest increasing breastfeeding rates could save nearly eight hundred thousand lives per year. This is due to how poor water supplies in certain areas go straight into the formula used by non-breastfeeding mothers.
Despite efficiency improvements in modern air conditioners, global energy use is still expected to increase eightfold by 2050.Every year around Christmas, I watch the Mickey Mouse Christmas Carol. Whenever I think of the movie, a line from Scrooge always comes to mind: if you give money to the poor, they won’t be poor anymore...
If we accept the wisdom of Scrooge – a question I’ll leave open for another day – and combine it with Harford’s observation about pollution, it frames the question of foreign aid a little differently. There are many poor countries around the world today. Do we step back, put our hands up in the air, and announce that we do not interfere
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Luddites knew perfectly well how machines would devalue their skills. New technologies always create winners and losers. Their suddenness comes from people retaining the same skills as always seeing a sudden change in their earning power.
Weak copyright protection tends to create opportunity for those interested in touring. Dickens did this after his profile was raised by bootlegged versions of his books while musicians do the same today.
Predicting a robot’s future capabilities is a tricky business. In 1956, it was thought robots with human-like thinking capacity were around two decades away. Today, it is thought robots with human-like thinking capacity are around two decades away.
A big challenge facing regulators is how to properly handle online matching services. An Airbnb host is able to rent out to only select guests, for example, based on pictures found online.
Internet security is based on our current inability to calculate the two large prime numbers being multiplied to create a larger semiprime number.
The engine was originally a solution to the pollution problem posed by horses.Let’s see, what do we have here…change is great, but not today…people always find the best price…smart people make optimistic predictions…racists find ways to discriminate…a security problem solved with a bigger lock …a highly visible problem is replaced with a less visible problem…
Maybe it is easier to just say the following:
History, like a poorly read blog, always repeats itself.
